Spawning Shaper Strongholds to compliment Elder Square

Hey.

The Elder Square in the top left corner is a great way to get permanent influence on your Underground Sea. However, it requires some maintenance, you have to watch out for the elder expanding beyond a couple of key maps, so you never reach the amount of maps to spawn the actual elder.

Shaper Strongholds could be very helpful to reduce or even remove the requirement for manual maintenance. Setting up strongholds on a couple of key maps, like Sulphur Vents and Ramparts, should ensure, Elder never leaves the top left square.

However, I am having trouble getting these strongholds to spawn after the initial 8 strongholds have been cleared. The info we have right now is quite vague: "It's a percentage chance whenever a Shaper influence spawns (to defend against the Elder) that it'll be a Shaper's Stronghold."

Hence my questions:

- How low is the chance to spawn a stronghold? Any estimates?

€ initial testing indicates pretty low chances. First spawn after ~20 maps, no 2nd spawn after anther ~35. Not nearly enough data, but for now I'll assume something significantly lower than 5%

- How exactly do you trigger this chance? Does it affect all instances of shaper influence being spawned? As in, can it actually spawn on the map you just ran to remove elder influence? Does moving an influence of an adjacent map spawn new influence on a map for the sake of this chance? Like, if you have consecutive shaper-influenced maps, and one of them becomes elder, the shaper influence would move to the next adjacent map. Does this count as adding new shaper influence to an already shaper-influenced map for the sake of having a chance to spawn a stronghold?
What about multiple instances of influence appearing, like when a big elder influence disappears, because the connecting map was taken by shaper, or elder himself vanished?


- Can you only get strongholds when completing elder maps, as in "adding" shaper influence? Or can a stronghold also spawn, if you do a shaper map and expand elder's influence?

€ first stronghold spawned when expanding elder influence.

- Do strongholds have any restrictions, like tier restrictions, or restrictions to specific maps, similar to area prophecies? How many strongholds can be on the atlas at the same time?

- Did anybody actually manage to spawn a shaper stronghold besides the initial 8?

€ I did

Kinda convoluted questions, just want to figure out the most optimal way to get a stronghold to spawn at a specific location



€ quick progress update: I managed to spawn one stronghold on Armory, when I was running Ramparts. Did about 20 of those. Currently trying the same for Sulphur Vents, 35 maps in, no 2nd stronghold yet. This answers a couple of my questions, for example you can get a stronghold on an adjacent map, not only the map you actually ran. Still not sure, if you can get it on the map you actually ran, though.

€€ on the 42st Sulphur Vents, my 2nd stronghold spawned - on Underground Sea. So, it can be any completely unrelated map. Also cap >=2 :)

But hey, now I got a perfect containment to endlessly run Sulphur Vents, until I finally get it.

How easily do the 8 initial strongholds spawn ?
I need to know how unlucky i am, cause i've spread my shaper influ on like maaaaany yellow maps, but still nothing.
I hope it's not related to zana quest line itself, cause mine is already complete (Standard league).

And speaking of that phrase "It's a percentage chance whenever a Shaper influence spawns (to defend against the Elder) that it'll be a Shaper's Stronghold.", i believe they mean the shapered maps that appear on the border of the elder influence, so that would exclude the ones that pop randomly (usually far away), aswell as the ones that are "replacing" a completed eldered map.
At least that's how i interpret it.

"

xhul wrote:

How easily do the 8 initial strongholds spawn ?
I need to know how unlucky i am, cause i've spread my shaper influ on like maaaaany yellow maps, but still nothing.
I hope it's not related to zana quest line itself, cause mine is already complete (Standard league).

They appeared right away for me, as soon as Elder did hit the field for the first time during Zana quest line (at least I think they did, didn't pay much attention). They seem to be tied to the questline, not sure how it works on standard.


Wanted to report back on my findings so far: After the initial 8 strongholds have been taken out, there seems to be a hard cap for strongholds at 2. At least, after spawning 2 I wasn't able to spawn any more within several hundred maps. After I cleared one of them, I got a new one within a few maps. Maybe there are other factors to consider here as well, but for now, I am working under the assumption of a hard cap at 2 strongholds.

Also, strongholds do act a little weird when spreading influence: I did have a stronghold on Underground River, which I thought to be beneficial, as I wouldn't need to worry about Shaper vanishing from the vincinity of Underground Sea, so the flip-flop would never stop. But it turns out, a stronghold does not spread shaper influence to adjacent meps if you complete an adjacent elder map the same way normal shaper influence does. So I had Underground Sea without any influence whatsoever pretty much every other map.

So while you do want the strongholds to help control your elder influence, you do not want a stronghold adjacent to the map you want to run. You want the strongholds to block elder progression in every direction but your run map, but you want regular shaper influence on and/or adjacent to your run map.


€

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xhul wrote:

And speaking of that phrase "It's a percentage chance whenever a Shaper influence spawns (to defend against the Elder) that it'll be a Shaper's Stronghold.", i believe they mean the shapered maps that appear on the border of the elder influence, so that would exclude the ones that pop randomly (usually far away), aswell as the ones that are "replacing" a completed eldered map.
At least that's how i interpret it.

Just had a random Shaper Stronghold spawn on Summit, nowhere near my current Elder influence. So strongholds can spawn at random locations far away, that get Shaper influence. Then I cleared the summit, and immediately got another stronghold on Maze. So you can get 2 strongholds in a row, also further solidifies the hard cap of 2.

What's elder square and what's the point?

I just found strongholds annoying as they can't be expanded Elder influence on and the one I just cleared next to Elder influence ate half of my Elder influence on the opposite side which is bullshit mechanism. My EYES!!

Thanks for your time.

Good to know the strongholds don't count as shaper-influenced as far as spreading is concerned, which might be limiting indeed, especially for farming shaper-influenced maps.

About Standard, gonna try a bit again, but it really looks like the event of the shaper's first appearance on the atlas counts as a required flag, locking the strongholds if that event has already been processed.

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Arthur606 wrote:

What's elder square and what's the point?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8otnfs/elder_square_for_farming_underground_sea_and/

The point is to provide a constant shaper/elder flip flop on a specific map you want to run over and over, while spending as little time as possible on fixing the influence. The strongholds have the potential to remove some of the most common reasons you'd have to take action to fix the influence, namely elder expanding too far and reaching the 20 map threshold.

Mine looks like this for now:

The stronghold on Armory is pretty much perfect, it doesn't allow Elder to progress any further in that direction. Ideally, the 2nd would go to one of the red circles, Sulphur Vents or Ashen Woods. But I haven't managed to spawn one of those yet.

"

I just found strongholds annoying as they can't be expanded Elder influence on and the one I just cleared next to Elder influence ate half of my Elder influence on the opposite side which is bullshit mechanism. My EYES!!

Yeah, some of the interactions seem kinda strange. The stronghold cannot spread shaper influence, and if you clear them, elder influence cannot spread on them.

"

xhul wrote:

About Standard, gonna try a bit again, but it really looks like the event of the shaper's first appearance on the atlas counts as a required flag, locking the strongholds if that event has already been processed.

That sucks. So standard people won't ever get to see them unless they are patched in somehow?

You could also put the stronghold on UGS and never kill the boss for perma shaper influence instead of flip flop.

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You could also put the stronghold on UGS and never kill the boss for perma shaper influence instead of flip flop.

Ah, so clearing a stronghold requires a boss kill always? Makes sense, I guess, since you get the additional loot from the boss as well.

However, since shaper influence is worse for pack size/map sustain and the boss actually has a decent chance at a map drop (and is super easy to kill), I think, I'll prefer the flip flop in general. Also, it is kinda hard to get a stronghold to spawn on a specific map.

Might be worth considering anyway. Shaper influence is better for valuable high lvl bases, correct?

Quick update/rant: Getting the 2nd Stronghold to spawn correctly is a huge pain. It keeps spawning on Undergound River, or random maps halfway across the atlas. Currently sitting on Reef, which would actually require me to uncomplete it afterwards. Thinking about just leaving it there.

I would consider the hard cap of 2 pretty much confirmed at this point. Whenever I leave 2 strongholds out in the open, it never spawns a 3rd one. But if I clear one, another one spawns within like 10 to 20 maps at max, sometimes immediately.

Another update: When I run white Sulphur Vents, Strongholds just don't ever want to spawn. However, when I just run my fully juiced up elder underground seas, I get new strongholds relatively quickly.

I don't have the numbers to back it up, but the spawn chance of elder strongholds could be related to either the tier, or the rarity of the map you are running somehow. I easily ran 50+ Sulphur Vents without getting a stronghold to spawn, while for ugs I usually had a new stronghold within 10 maps.

€ finally got it. Just ran Underground Seas and cleared new strongholds as they appeared. Eventually it spawned on Ashen Woods: